E-M1: Ojito Wilderness and a limestone cave, monochrome

E-M1, 14-54 f/2.8-3.5 II and 11-22 f/2.8-3.5. Ojito Wilderness, a highly vegetated area of mesas, hoodoos and badlands out past Bernalillo, NM, in the same San Juan Basin that encompasses the Rio Puerco, Chaco Canyon and the Bisti-De Na Zin wilderness.

And a couple more, from a cave in the soda dam in the Jemez mountains:

I was soaked from head to toe in this cave, which is oddly in an independent structure entirely above ground (not sure where all the water on the roof is coming from). Thankful for drip sealing on the E-M1 and my lenses. My next lens purchase needs to be a drip-sealed macro, either the 50mm f/2.0 or the 60mm f/2.8 (the former with some extension tubes will net the same magnification ratio and might be a more useful lens for me in general, albiet slower to focus). Then again, based on my other recent photographic expeditions, my next lens purchase also needs to be a weather-sealed telephoto, like the 50-200...

Contrary to other reports, I actually consistently find that my E-M1 yields cleaner results with fewer hot pixels in long exposures than my E-PM2, using long exposure NR with both.

My usual black-and-white conversion is actually an action I have set up in Photoshop:

• Channel mixer adjustment layer, set to monochrome, and RGB +50%, +150%, -100%
• Curves adjustment layer, with points created at 197,197 and 32,16, creating a high-contrast curve that focuses more on the shadows, leaving highlights completely alone and midtones mostly alone.
• Selective color adjustment layer, neutrals set to cyan -5%-- red toning of midtones.

I do my dodging and burning as necessary on the color photograph in Lightroom.

In other news, protective filters are a good idea, at least judging by all the difficult-to-remove spots of evaporated limestone on my filters, for which the only real cure seems to be filtered water and elbow grease.

As I've said before, I really admire your landscapes. Part of that is your hand to the treatment, but in these I love how you depict the stark distances of the landscape using close proximity interest.

With regard to long exposure hot pixels, are you using the camera in a way that tends to heat the sensor (like, long bouts of long exposures)? I was concerned one evening doing that myself (HDR panos), but the results were clean - but that was just a one-off observation of the sensor running almost continuous for a 1/2-1 hour.

Wonderful series of landscape and cave photos!

Dave

Wonderful landscapes.  You are so fortunate to live in a part of the country with such interesting land.

Nice use of the 14-54 and 11-22.  Well done!

I really like the images but I don't care for the toning. That's just me though. I like toning but never this tint for some reason. Good job though!

Bob Tullis wrote:

As I've said before, I really admire your landscapes. Part of that is your hand to the treatment, but in these I love how you depict the stark distances of the landscape using close proximity interest.

With regard to long exposure hot pixels, are you using the camera in a way that tends to heat the sensor (like, long bouts of long exposures)? I was concerned one evening doing that myself (HDR panos), but the results were clean - but that was just a one-off observation of the sensor running almost continuous for a 1/2-1 hour.

My exposures rarely push beyond 60 seconds (and on the rare occasions that they do, the fact that Olympus cameras now have a time mode as opposed to bulb, regardless of whether or not it's live, is a blessing). I typically don't do more than about 2-3 of these in a row before I lose patience with the subject and move on to something else, giving the sensor time to cool. Last time I made a decent exposure in this cave, it was using the 14-42 II at the same aperture, on the E-PM2, after about 60 secs, on a much cooler day (though the hot spring fed pool kinda makes the temperature a lot more constant in there). Lots of hot pixels needed to be cloned out.

Most people who really complain about the E-M1's performance with long exposures aren't using long exposure NR, but I've never considered that to be optional (except in the few cases. And for some reason the E-PM2 seems to get me more hot pixels with exposures of any length. I have live time refreshes set the same on both cameras.

jkrumm wrote:

I just duplicated your settings (I think) and the slight red toning is interesting. I switch back and forth between my regular monochrome image and now it looks kind of green.

Yeah, that's part of why I shy away from using blue or green toning--much as I like blue, I can't shake the feeling that those tones being dominant feels like poorly calibrated equipment. The toning you like is, of course, totally up to you.

My aim for the channel mixer settings is dark skies and bright yellows and oranges, which seems to work pretty well for me for the desert southwest, and also worked pretty well for a few shots from Yosemite, so probably it's a good general purpose landscape setup. I probably wouldn't use the same setup for things other than landscape and architecture, though.

I think the thing to remember with monochrome conversion is that there is no real one stop shop. You can't just translate each tone from a color band to monochrome expected to come out looking anything like good. Far more important than the spectral response of your film is your dodging and burning. Which is partly why Nik Silver Efex Pro is such a brilliant piece of software for monochrome conversions, because it's not just about the monochrome conversion. I just didn't want to spend money on it when I already have Photoshop.

#1 and #5 are good, IMO. Others have a more confusing/uninteresting composition.